Former University of Oregon journalism student Samuel Sourikoff spent part of his time away from campus robbing and breaking into jewelry stores in three states to help pay off gambling debts, investigators said Thursday.
“Two lives” is what Eugene police Detective Jeff Donaca said Sourikoff had for a 19-month period between May 2007 and December 2008, when the 22-year-old targeted five jewelry stores in Eugene, Nevada and California.
Sourikoff also robbed Mazzi’s restaurant in south Eugene four times during his crime spree, which ended when restaurant patrons helped police chase him down following a heist there last Dec. 5.
Sourikoff — who was sentenced this week in Lane County Circuit Court to a mandatory 12-year prison term for a series of local robberies that included the Mazzi’s holdups and two takeover-style robberies at Beaudet Jewelry in south Eugene — confessed to those crimes and similar incidents in Nevada and California during interviews with investigators earlier this year.
Donaca said Sourikoff once had an academic scholarship to UO and played prep sports.
But the young man apparently went off-track and into debt after gambling online and at several Nevada casinos.
“It’s really pretty sad,” Donaca said.
The former UO student wasn’t a suspect in any of the crimes until last September, when an acquaintance told FBI investigators that Sourikoff was the man pictured in surveillance photos taken during the unsolved jewelry store crimes.
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For more information about problem gambling in college, as well as the new ground-breaking "Problem Gambling Awareness Project" to address problem gambling at the University of Oregon, click here.
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Brad Killian passed away last Friday, January 7.
